Patty David, owner and lead learning design consultant at
GoldStar ID LLC, had been creating online courses for universities and
businesses for years. But when she struck out on her own in 2017, she knew she
had to tackle instructional designers’ biggest problems: effective
collaboration with subject matter experts, better alignment of course materials
with stated objectives and outcomes, and consistency of information to improve the
student experience. The writing-intensive nature of the work made organization
difficult and often resulted in multiple document versions and endless email
strings.
“I knew there had to be a better way than flipping back and
forth between pages in a Word document or web pages in a learning management
system. My clients needed to see an entire course at once, not piecemeal,”
Patty explained. “And I needed a way to capture their input on every component
and every written paragraph in the course.”
In consultation with Statdash Solutions, Patty designed dashboards
to collate large amounts of written information using statuses set to “show comments.”
“Now my clients and I can collaborate in real-time, commenting on specific elements,
answering questions, and having a complete history of every change made as we
build courses together. No more searching through emails for updates or change
requests. No more versioning of documents,” she said. “The collaboration has
been phenomenal! I’m working with university professors and high-end business
owners, and every one of them has commented on how easy and effective this
process is. SME engagement is high, which leads to better courses.”
Patty takes advantage of Statdash’s editing tools, search
and replace, and column/row shortcut views to ensure consistency across each
course and alignment of each module’s content with objectives. “I simply could
not do my job without Statdash,” she explained. “There is no product out there that
gives me this level of insight and collaboration. When a client makes a change
to content or uploads a file to Statdash’s file manager, I receive an immediate
or hourly notification. Nothing catches me by surprise.”
